[CCC DEV] occPlug

[cljacobsen at gmail.com]

Hi Clayton, (any anyone else interested in working on occPlug)

I've just committed some occPlug code to the trunk that I edited a
long time ago [1]. The aim of the edits is to split out the
architecture specific parts of the code to avoid tests within the main
code that look like this:

if(osx OR linux)
{
  … some code …
} else if (windows)
{
  … some other code
}

Hopefully there will actually not be very much actual architecture
specific code as, when compiling and uploading for example, the
command-line tools (occbuild) should work pretty much identically on
all the platforms.

So, where we are at right now is that everything works on OS X (though
I have not checked with the latest changes in trunk). However things
have been explicitly coded for OS X. Thus, what needs to happen now is
for any host architecture specific bits in the code to be broken out
into the new files in the host directory and for specific versions to
be made for Windows (and Linux where required).

As to editing, compiling, and, testing occPlug you can either use
jEdit exclusively, although what I normally do is to use Eclipse for
the editing and only use jEdit for testing, or use ant (the build
tool), your favourite editor, and jEdit for testing. Regardless you
will need the dependencies (jEdit and the ErrorList plugin), which you
can either fetch manually [2] and [3] (but it is probably easier to)
run the build of the distribution which will fetch them for you.
Follow these instructions for the build [4]. In fact you only need to
run the ./build_occplug.sh step.

Regardless of what method you use for your compile/edit/test cycle you
will need to point the build script at the dependencies. If you are
not using Eclipse I think all you have to do is create the file
build.properties with the appropriate paths set. (You can check the
instructions in the file here: [5]). Mine currently looks like this:
------------------8<------------------8<------------------8<----------
jedit.install.dir=/Users/clj/work/kroc/kroc-trunk/distribution/osx/build/jedit/jedit-program
jedit.user.install.dir=/Users/clj/work/kroc/kroc-trunk/distribution/osx/build/jedit/jedit-program/jars
------------------8<------------------8<------------------8<----------
Pay extra attention to ensuring that you do not have any space at the
very end of the lines in that file as things will not work correctly
if you do. If you are using Eclipse you have to set up a new project,
fiddle a bunch of settings, like compiler target and dependencies, and
you should then be good to go. I can't give you specific instructions
on that right now cos I can't remember the exact steps required.

Once you can build things and start the occPlug in jEdit then you can
start coding!

Of course coding on the occPlug is not entirely independent of getting
the rest of the Windows distribution ready, ie file layout in the
final packages is especially important. See my earlier email to the
developers list about that: "[CCC DEV] Prep for OSCON" [6]

If you feel like trying to get an environment set up where you can
successfully make changes, build and test, then I'll try to help as
much as possible. I won't be available over the weekend though (from
Thursday).

Cheers,
  Christian

PS. I've switched this to the developers mailing list, I'm not sure if
you are on it?

[1] http://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/kroc/trac/changeset/6551
[2] http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jedit/jedit42install.jar
[3] http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jedit-plugins/ErrorList-1.5-bin.zip
[4] http://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/kroc/trac/wiki/WindowsDistribution
[5] http://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/kroc/trac/browser/kroc/trunk/tools/occplug/documentation/building.txt
[6] http://unhosting.org/pipermail/developers/2010-June/000109.html